Pun Salad

The Amazon page summarizes the huzzahs:

A Best Book of 2022 by the New York Public Library • One of the Best SFF Books of 2022 (Gizmodo) • One of the Best SF Mysteries of 2022 (CrimeReads) • A GoodReads Choice Award finalist for Best Science Fiction!

And I think I put it on my get-at-library list due to a decent review at the Wall Street Journal last year. (That list is pretty long.)

And yet I didn't care for it at all. Obviously, you may have different results.

The Amazon page goes on to quote the book flap: "Titanic meets Event Horizon in this SF horror novel…"

Reader, it's more like "This SF horror novel is a shameless ripoff of Alien and Aliens": Plucky lady space traveller encounters a dread menace in space, which starts picking off her fellow crew members, which only she escapes by the skin of her teeth. But she is finagled into returning by her Evil Corporation™ employers, and she once again needs to deal with that same dread menace…"

The book is narrated by plucky Ellen Ripley Claire Kovalik, team leader of a small five-person spaceship, the LINA, tasked with repairing communication relays in the far reaches of the solar system. When they pick up a distress call from the Aurora, a luxury spaceliner thought to be irrevocably lost decades ago. The crew decide to rendezvous and board the hulk, only to find the entire crew and passengers long dead, victims of mass homicide and suicide. But! Riches may be had if the LINA's crew can establish their salvage rights to the loot onboard, while preventing the previously-mentioned Evil Corporation™ from screwing them out of it. Then bad things happen.

Along the way, Claire says the f-word a lot.

One major difference between Ripley and Kovalik: Kovalik has some serious mental issues, ones that are completely obvious to her crew, and you would think also to her employers. Was she really the best choice for even a routine repair mission? I wouldn't think so, but I guess it's hard to find good help in the future.